It Stopped At The Pump

The Beam · August 5, 2026

Wholesale gasoline is now cheaper than it was before the war. The pump is eight percent dearer.

The Round Trip That Did Not Arrive

The planned strike on Iran was called off over the weekend and the energy complex repriced hard, and it has kept repricing every session since. Wholesale gasoline closed Wednesday at $2.834 a gallon. Before any of this started, on July 10, it was $2.985. The gallon has not merely given back the war premium, it has gone through the other side and is now five percent cheaper than it was before there was a war to price.

The pump was $4.079 last Monday, up eight percent from early July.

That is the level. What follows is where the money actually stopped, why the usual explanation for it does not survive contact with the crack spread, what it means for the August inflation print consensus is already penciling in, and the two dated releases that would tell us we have this wrong.

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